Description
Book SynopsisThe book is about Oscar Wilde’s, George Bernard Shaw’s and Arthur Wing Pinero’s plays written and performed in London in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The plays discussed in this book share important common points. They are set in London and illustrative of the realities of the metropolis. Performed extensively on the English stage and indeed throughout the English-speaking world, the plays reflect different backgrounds, origins, and life trajectories of the playwrights. There are perceptible differences in the attitudes as well as modes of expression of the playwrights. The works considered here are inextricably connected to London and they function as important documents of social history. They are examples of developing dramatic forms within which London and Londoners appear as both the dissolving and unifying elements of the broad spectrum of late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century society. The themes and concerns of these works accurately reflect those of Victorian/Edwardian Londoners. This book provides an understanding of the close connection between London society, with its manners and morals, and the city’s visible and invisible impact on the characters depicted in these plays.
Table of ContentsIntroduction – An account of London and its society in Oscar Wilde’s Lady Windermere’s Fan – Alienation in the city and in the countryside in Arthur Wing Pinero’s The Second Mrs. Tanqueray – A view of London, gender, and class in George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion – Conclusion
